A Knight In Cowboy Boots

by Quint, Suzie

Rachel’s mouth gaped, her eyes wide with surprise. Zach turned to walk out.

  “I can’t—”

  He spun back. “Can’t what? Can’t behave like a human being to someone you work with? Are you that afraid they’ll all see you as weak? You best decide where your priorities are coz this ain’t about your job. This is about you keeping peace in the family.”

  “In the— You can’t possibly be thinking about marrying this girl! You haven’t even known her—”

  “I didn’t say nothing about getting married. The peace you’ll be keeping ain’t with Maddie; it’s with me. And this is just the first step. From now on, you’re gonna stop acting like my nursemaid. I gotta take my own share of the blame on that; I let you do things for me when I come offa the rig that I oughtn’t. Like buying me clothes—”

  “You always pay me back—”

  “That’s not the point. I don’t need my sister buying my clothes. Until I do get married, that’s my job. This is about boundaries, Rachel. Stop stepping on mine.”

  In her eyes, Zach saw Rachel’s temper ignite. “You’re pushing me away for a woman who shot you!”

  “Don’t try pulling that on me. You ain’t mad coz she shot me. You’re mad coz she was in my room in the first place.”

  “In my hotel!”

  “So that makes you the guardian of my morals? Make me up a bill for all the times I done stayed here on you. And if that don’t buy back my privacy, then I’ll stay somewheres else when I’m in town.”

  “Mamma didn’t raise you to be sniffing around easy women.” It was a last salvo, and for the first time, Rachel twitched, as though she knew she’d just made a fatal mistake.

  “You wanna tell Mamma?” Zach asked, his voice so low and cold he almost didn’t recognize himself. Given how straight-laced Rachel was he couldn’t blame her for thinking a woman who’d gone to the room of a man she’d just met was easy. But threatening to bring their mother into it—that was hitting below the belt. “Go ahead. She didn’t kill Ezra when she found out he had a taste for girls, so I suppose I’ll survive, too.” Zach turned back toward the door but stopped with it open to look back at Rachel.

  “Whatever else you decide, I suggest you heed what I just said about apologizing to Maddie. If you don’t, you got one less brother.”

  He should have closed the door quietly, but slamming it felt good, too. Lord, he needed a drink. He smiled grimly at the irony. He needed a drink to calm down before he saw Maddie, but he couldn’t get a drink without seeing Maddie.

  Instead he headed outside to walk it off. Twenty minutes later, he was back with a supply of condoms in a brown paper bag and envying women the anonymity a purse gave them. He tucked a couple in his jeans pocket and left the rest in his truck’s glove compartment before heading for the bar.

  *

  Zach’s talk with Rachel was taking far too long. Maddie was already antsy when Jake walked into the bar.

  “Hey, Maddie.” He swung one leg over the barstool as though he were mounting a horse. “Seen that no good brother of mine tonight?”

  “He’s talking to Rachel. You want a Lone Star?”

  Jake nodded, digging his wallet from his hip pocket. “He’s talking to Rachel? Hunh.”

  The way he said it made Maddie ask, “What’s that mean?”

  “It’s just that Zach’s pretty even-tempered. It takes a bit to piss him off. Mind you, Rachel could test the patience of an archangel, but I seen Zach take a lotta crap offa her without blowing. Even then, I never seen him mad at her like he was at breakfast.”

  “What do you mean?” Maddie asked as she set the bottle in front of him.

  “Usually, when Zach gets mad, it’s hot-mad. He swears, makes threats he don’t mean, and he gets over it.” Jake took a sip of beer. “Usually even laughs about it later, but this morning, he was cold-mad.”

  “You don’t think he’ll laugh about this?”

  “Depends on how it turns out.”

  The Sunday night shift got busy then, and Maddie didn’t have a chance to talk to Jake again. Even when Zach finally walked in, she only had time to get him a beer. Every time she turned around, her eyes went back to him as he sat, talking with his brother.

  When she finally got back to them, they were talking about the ranch again. “You know he’s gonna want you at that rodeo,” Jake was telling Zach. “He wants to convince you that we just got to buy that bull—or at least a straw of his sperm. Gotta have a calf outta that line.”

  “Why don’t we just get some of Bodacious’s sperm?” Zach asked, his tone edging onto facetious.

  “I’m sure you wouldn’t get any arguments on that purchase.”

  “You didn’t tell me you breed bucking bulls,” Maddie said.

  “You know bulls?” Jake asked.

  “I know Bodacious,” Maddie said. During his brief career, the bull had achieved a notoriety that had yet to be topped. “Only ridden ten times out of attempts.”

  “Baddest of the bad asses,” Jake said, referring to the bull’s often quoted unofficial title.

  “I’d rather have a straw from Little Yellow Jacket,” Zach said, referring to the three time Bull of the Year.

  Maddie left the brothers arguing good naturedly about which bull would sire the best buckers while she checked on the other customers.

  They were still at it when Maggie came back. “So have you bred any bulls I might have heard of?” Maddie asked, interrupting the building of their fantasy herd.

  “Not much chance of that. We mostly supply high school rodeos in East Texas,” Zach said.

  “So far,” Jake added. “We only got serious about breeding five years ago when Daddy realized Zach had a talent for picking ‘em.”

  “They think I got a talent. It’s really more by-guess and by-golly.”

  “I’d rather have your guess that just about anyone else’s guarantee.”

  “Don’t listen to him. I’ve just gotten lucky picking which bulls oughta cover which cows.” A glint came into Zach’s eyes as he looked at Maddie. “Then again, maybe I’m better at this than I think I am.”

  Maddie threw a lemon twist at him, but her laughter evaporated when she saw Rachel standing in the doorway to the bar.

  Chapter Fifteen

  As Rachel approached, one of the customers down the bar flagged Maddie. The whole time she was filling his drink order, it felt like a herd of moths was trying to beat its way out of her stomach. Stolen glances revealed Zach leaning a little too casually on the bar, Rachel standing stiff beside him. Neither looked at or even acknowledged the other that Maddie saw. Jake had gone silent as well, but the hint of a smile on his lips between sips of beer as he watched his siblings ignore each other betrayed his amusement.

  Maddie kept her eyes on Rachel as she came back to them. She fervently wished Zach had just left it alone.

  Rachel shifted from one foot to another, her frame stiff with internal tension. She took a deep breath, dropped her eyes, and said, “Zach has pointed out to me that I have boundary issues and may have inadvertently offended you this morning. I hope you’ll forgive me for butting into your private business.”

  It was a no frills apology, but asking forgiveness was obviously not something Zach’s sister had a lot of experience with. “I appreciate your apology,” Maddie said. “As far as I’m concerned, this morning is forgotten.”

  “Thank you.” As Rachel turned to leave, she shot Zach a look that was—triumphant?

  Zach swiveled on his barstool to watch her go. Maddie shifted her gaze to Jake, who looked as though it was all he could do to restrain himself from laughing out loud. Suddenly, Maddie saw the humor in it. As Zach swung back around to the bar, Maddie and Jake burst out laughing.

  Zach looked at them like they’d lost their collective minds. Then he shook his head and muttered, “How does she do it? She lost that round, but she acts like she won.”

  “Only Rach can do that,” Jake said through his laughter.

  “You’re
family dynamics are so strange,” Maddie told Zach.

  “I don’t think they’re that strange. Don’t you have any brothers or sisters?”

  A vivid image of Laurel’s coffin surrounded by flowers at the front of the chapel flashed through Maddie’s mind. Her face suddenly felt stiff, but she forced her lips to shape the word, “No.”

  *

  I’ve just stepped on a landmine, Zach thought. “I’m actually kinda glad to hear that,” he said, trying to find a way to keep his simple question from exploding under him. “When that door opened this afternoon, I had visions of some hulking, overprotective brother stomping me into a blood splatter. You probably done noticed I wasn’t exactly prepared to defend myself. Being an overly protective brother myself, I figured a duel at dawn probably wouldn’t be an option. Especially with my choice of weapons.”

  “And that would be what?” Maddie asked.

  Zach bought a dramatic pause with a sip of beer. “You’ve seen the weaponry. What do you think?”

  A grin spread slowly, thawing Maddie’s face, and Zach congratulated himself on sidestepping the danger.

  “Could it be the one in your pants?” Maddie asked with mock innocence.

  “I didn’t tell you how good I got at those pissing contests, did I?”

  It was Jake’s turn to look perplexed. “What are y’all talking about?”

  Zach’s grin invited Maddie to enjoy their private joke with him. “You’d’ve had to be there, little brother.”

  *

  Jake left long before the bar closed, so Zach sat on the bar nursing his beer, watching Maddie, wondering if she was going to invite him home with her. Wondering, too, what had happened to his resolve to get to the bottom of her secrets.

  Could he live without knowing what she was running from? Maybe. As long as she acknowledged that there were parts of her past that were off-limits. If he knew which parts were fabricated and that everything else she told him was true and honest, he could politely let the rest go unchallenged.

  When, he suddenly wondered, had he started to think about her as a fixture in his world? It had to be nestled somewhere between the extraordinary sex and his instinct to protect her. With that realization, he knew that letting her have her secrets wasn’t the only issue. It wasn’t even the most important one.

  Whatever Maddie had left behind had made her run. She’d stolen an identity that wasn’t hers to hide behind. More important, she was still terrified that, whatever or whoever her personal bogeyman was, he would catch up with her. Nor could Zach allow himself to forget that she wasn’t really Jesse’s mamma. As much as he might want to ignore all that to play house with her, he needed to know what she was so afraid of because, if her fears proved justified, not knowing could make all the difference in his ability to protect her.

  For both their sakes, he had to find out her secrets.

  “Does Claudia still try to schedule everyone to get their days off back-to-back?” Zach asked at one of those lulls when everyone was content with their drinks.

  She looked up from the counter where she was slicing lime twists, a sly smile on her face. “Are you asking what days I have off?”

  “Busted,” Zach admitted. “What’s my penalty?”

  “I’ll let you know. As it happens, Jane’s doctor hasn’t put her on bed rest yet, so she’s still working some of her regular shifts.”

  “So you’re still not on a full-time schedule.”

  “Nope. I have Thursday, Friday, and Saturday off. Claudia says it’s likely to be the last weekend I have off in a long time, so I’d better enjoy it.”

  “Day shift or night shift Sunday?”

  “Night shift. Why? What are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking I oughta go to the Gladewater rodeo this week. I gotta make a decision about a bull. Since you ain’t seen a Texas rodeo, why don’t you and Jesse come with me?”

  “Because everything is bigger and better in Texas?”

  Zach wagged his eyebrows and smiled suggestively. “Ain’t I already proved that?”

  Maddie laughed. “The evidence has been persuasive.”

  “Come with me,” Zach cajoled.

  “Are you going back to the ranch before then?”

  “I oughta. I thought I’d leave in the morning, but I could be back for you Thursday.”

  “I don’t know. I could pick up extra shifts if Jane’s doctor does put her on bed rest.”

  “Why don’t you think about it?” Zach said. “I could call you Wednesday.”

  “I don’t think I’ll change my mind, but you can call.” She started on another lime. “Have you got a room here?”

  “Yeah.”

  She kept her eyes on the knife in her hand. “If you want to pack your things up tonight and leave from my place in the morning … I mean, you know … if you want to.”

  How could she have even the smallest doubt he’d want to? Was she offering in order to soften her decision not to go to rodeo with him? He didn’t answer until his silence made her lift her head to look at him. “I thought you’d never ask,” he said.

  Maddie’s cheeks pinked up.

  He packed the few things in his room, checked out, and followed Maddie home. He looked askance as she rang her own bell before she let them in the house.

  “Giving Peggy warning I’m on my way up,” Maddie explained. Zach groaned inwardly. He was in for a display of conspiratorial winks and nods. Even roused from sleep, Peggy didn’t disappoint him.

  As she gathered her text books, Zach said, “I’ll be right back.”

  “Where are you going?” Maddie asked.

  “I’m walking Peggy home.”

  “She’s only going next door.”

  Zach put his arms around Maddie and kissed her on the forehead. “Something you need to understand about us Texas boys. We take care of our womenfolk. All of our womenfolk. I won’t be long.” He left her shaking her head, but smiling.

  When they reached Peggy’s front stoop, Zach stopped her. “I was wondering if you’d do me a favor.”

  Peggy looked at him curiously.

  Zach handed her a slip of paper he’d written his cell number on. “Would you find out what’s Maddie’s favorite flower?”

  Peggy grinned. “Of course, I will.”

  “For God’s sakes, be tactful. Don’t let her guess why you’re asking.”

  Peggy squared her shoulders. “Hard as some people might find it to believe, I do know how to be sneaky when the circumstances warrant it.” The slivers of ice in her tone nearly cut him.

  “I’m sure you do,” Zach said, fighting his amusement. “After all, you’re a woman.”

  Back in Maddie’s apartment, he wrapped his arms around her, and in the quiet of the night, he felt as though they were the only two people awake in the world.

  The sensation endured as they moved to the bed, through their love-making, and even after, as they fell asleep with Zach spooned against Maddie’s back, thinking how content he’d be to end each day with Maddie’s firm ass against his groin.

  *

  Maddie shifted in her sleep, her hip brushing against his morning erection. More asleep than awake, Zach was barely aware when his hand sought her soft breast or when his hand closed around it. The only sensation that really registered was the increased need in his groin. He rolled on top of her, found the warm spot between her thighs and entered her without foreplay. He might have noticed if she’d resisted or even been passive, but when she responded by matching his demands, his body accepted it as his due. His balls tightened with the impending climax as he stroked in and out. He did nothing to prolong the tension, accepting instead that he would spill into her embarrassingly quickly.

  When he was done, his limbs felt too heavy to move. Still buried deep inside her, he lay on top of her without even breathing hard. When she contracted her muscles around him, he moaned. His first conscious thought was to wonder if he could do it again so soon.

  He turned his head and saw t
he first rays of the dawn sun lighting the room. They couldn’t have slept more than four or five hours.

  “Zach, you weigh a ton.” Maddie’s complaint had no bite.

  He pulled his elbows in and braced his weight on his forearms, still reluctant to pull out of her.

  “Sorry. I didn’t give you a chance to catch up.”

  “That’s okay. I know how you men are about morning sex.”

  “And how’s that?”

  “Rude. Selfish. Delightfully eager.”

  He let his head drop until his forehead rested lightly against hers.

  “So good of you to understand.” His neck tensed, jerking his head up. “Dammit!”

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t even think about a condom.”

  Maddie took several slow breathes. With each one, Zach braced himself for the acrimony he deserved.

  “We can’t keep making a habit of this.”

  “I know,” he agreed, relieved that she took the news calmly.

  “Do you have to leave this early?”

  “No.”

  “Then let’s go back to sleep until Jesse wakes up.”

  That wouldn’t be more than an hour or so. Zach rolled off her and went to the bathroom to clean up. Maddie was already asleep when he crawled back into bed. He pulled her tight against him as he spooned into her back, his hand resting on her flat stomach. As he started to drift back to sleep, he fashioned a vision of what lay beneath his hand, deep inside Maddie’s uterus, where he had shot his sperm. With his fingers splayed, his palm pressed firmly against her skin, he imagined her flat stomach swelling ever so slightly as his child quickened inside her womb.

  Zach stiffened, jolting himself awake.

  He’d been enamored with only two women in his life. The first time, he’d mistaken it for love. The second time, he’d tried to be more cautious about overestimating his feelings. Neither infatuation had withstood getting better acquainted with the objects of his esteem. The hurt he’d felt when each of the affairs ended had made him vow he’d be even more cautious the next time, but as he lay there with his hand on Maddie, envisioning her pregnant, he knew he was already sunk. So quickly, he was more enamored with her than he’d ever been with anyone in his life.